When I got home and laid it all out on the floor, I felt that the 2 lots of gold/orange fabric as a background to the Rose Window was going to be too much - back to the drawing board again! After some discussion with my husband and looking back at what fabric I had available (including all the earlier Japanese fabric I'd been using), it was decided that I could make a smaller rectangular quilt, using one lot of the gold/orange background to the diamond window, but then to use the navy fabric I had left from the background to the petals of the Rose Window in two rectangular panels top and bottom. I could repeat this on the reverse with the fabrics I'd chosen too. Decision made!

 

Time to get to work. By the end of today, I had placed and stitched the Rose Window on the gold/orange fabric, and I'd started on the applique of my sister's name.

 

I still had a few decisions to make though -

1) Would I add anything to the left-hand navy panel? 

2) How would I 'quilt' (i.e. stitch the top, wadding and bottom together to become the quilt)?

3) Finally, what fabric would I use for binding the completed quilt?

 

2) and 3) could be thought about but weren't 'pressing' and could wait until I was at those stages, but I did need to make a decision on 1)

 

More discussion with my husband, and together we decided that I would go back to the orginal fabrics I'd used in the petals in the Rose Window and cut some more roses/circles out and put them vertically down the left hand panel. I'd also place the Japanese name vertically and on the right, as this is often how it would be displayed in Japan. Finally, I'd embellish with gold binding (another technique I'd learnt on my'Quilt Retreat' course). 

Once these decisions had been made, it was straightforward to get on and complete.